started out as a feeling
by infinitely-climbing
Summary: The day he barrels into her, covered in rain and red leaves, is only the beginning. :Companion piece to "as beautiful as days can be".


**This is the companion piece to _as beautiful as days can be_. If you haven't read it yet, I would strongly recommend reading that before reading this—while the timeline is roughly the same, there are certain things that happen in _as beautiful as days can be_ that are explained in this story, and I very selfishly don't want this companion piece to steal the other's thunder.  
**

**But here we are! Almost 20k words later (and a lot more time than I thought it would take), I've finally finished this! So here it is.**

**I hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think when you've finally hit the bottom of the page of this massive story.**

* * *

**Inspiration**

_It **started out as a feeling**  
Which then grew into a hope  
Which then turned into a quiet thought  
Which then turned into a quiet word  
And then that word grew louder and louder  
'Til it was a battle cry  
I'll come back when you call me  
No need to say goodbye_

~The Call, _Regina Spektor_

**and**

"You see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push!"

~Christopher Nolan, _The Dark Knight_, The Joker (Heath Ledger)

* * *

**{Prelude}  
**

_We've got something you can't undo._

~Cher Lloyd, _Oath_

* * *

Clove's first (and only) female friend (ever) is the one girl who does not get scared after Clove runs over and chomps down, hard, onto her arm after the girl takes the cookie Clove wanted. The action in itself is quite an enigma to those who witness it—she is small, and the girl is not only three years older, but she's also huge and blonde and just about the opposite of everything Clove is—and looking back, even Clove cannot quite decide if the action was brave or stupid (probably both). She simply remembers a feeling of irritation that someone else dared to take what she wanted.

Somehow, the girl decides that it was brave and warrants a certain degree of respect despite the blood rushing down her arm, and rather than a big-girl-beats-little-girl-up scenario, they become best friends.

It isn't until later that Clove comprehends just how lucky she was.

There's a certain comfort to be had in an older friend. When they're young, they run together in sunlit meadows, playing mock-Games and pretending to be their favorite Victors. A little older and the girl decides to start helping teach Clove weaponry, never mind the fact that they are only 8 and 5, and she'll never forget the feeling she gets the first time she throws a knife (it's silver and shiny and has rubies embedded in the hilt, and it's beautifully, deliciously sharp). She somehow hits the bullseye on her first try, sinking the blade into the painted red wood with a satisfying thwack. The system begins for them, then: her companion prefers close-range weapons, like swords and maces and other objects that, coupled with her large build, would give her an edge, and Clove plays with the knives until she she can practically throw them in her sleep. It's mutualism at its finest: so long as the girl brings knives, Clove will spar and help her friend train when asked.

When Pre-Academy finally starts for her at age 6, she's already eons ahead of the girls in her grade in her weakest areas. Later, when they finally get around to knives and she's already able to hit her target every time, she shrugs and says that she doesn't know how she does it so well. Better let them think that it's all natural talent (which, admittedly, she does posses ample amount of) rather than training.

The more secrets you have, after all, the more powerful you are.

Eventually the girl's father gets a promotion at the Nut, and the family decides to move to a bigger home. It only makes sense that they grow apart once they stop seeing each other every day.

When moving day finally comes, the girl hugs Clove—and hugs are a rarity in District Two—and whispers a secret in Clove's ear, and it is only years later that Clove sees her again, and things have changed.

* * *

**I. Wood  
**

_The looking glass, so shiny and new—how quickly the glamour fades!_

~Florence + the Machine, _Rabbit Heart_

* * *

The impact of the object that has suddenly barreled into her is heralded by the fluttering of a bright red maple leaf, battered by the unexpected downpour.

Blinking the rain from her eyes, she looks us to find a giant towering over her. No, not a giant—a boy, with sopping blond hair and bright blue eyes. He's definitely older than her, though another cursory glance tells her he's not quite as old as his size would suggest. He pulls off the persona of a tough boy, a Victor in the making well, but his eyes are still bright, rather than jaded with the hardness of those in the Academy, and that's how she knows he's not as old as he looks.

She smirks up at him with the realization that as of right now, he's probably more bark than bite. The annoyance clearly displayed on his face only adds to her amusement.

(She likes to play with her food before chopping it up and eating it, and perhaps today's the day she tries to eat something bigger than herself.)

(But this meal doesn't turn out the way she expected, and looking back later, she'll wonder if everything would have been different if she hadn't played so many games to amuse herself, if she hadn't been half as clever, if she had not tried to ascend the food chain quite so quickly.)

"Watch where you're going," he snaps, glaring, and she wonders why he's so irritated, especially at a small seven-year-old girl such as herself. Most people wouldn't even bat an eyelash, but whether he realizes it or not, there must be something about this encounter that has him so on edge.

She just smirks some more. "You were the one who ran into me," she says, nonplussed, and she's enjoying this encounter so immensely that she wonders what it is about it that makes her so oddly gleeful.

He scowls for a few more seconds, but her facial expression does not waver. Abruptly, his demeanor changes, and later, she will find herself wondering why.

"How old are you?"

She isn't quite sure that this is a question she should actually answer, seeing as he'll probably use it to his advantage somehow anyway, but somehow this doesn't faze her. "Seven."

"What's your name?" An even riskier question, and this time, it's one she won't answer without getting something out of it for herself. District Two is too political to give away anything like that without getting something first, and she's loath to defy those bounds when she's been operating so successfully under them for so long.

"What's yours?" she retorts, a clear challenge in her voice.

He smiles then, and he looks entirely different to her—softer, kinder, blue eyes cutting through her brown ones in an entirely different way. It sends her reeling, and all of the sudden he's someone she wants to _know_ rather than simply meet.

"Cato," he says in an easy voice. She blinks at the name, flashing back to another time, in another place when she heard it, and words tumble out once more.

"Clove."

And with that, she disappears into the swirl of rain and crimson leaves, because regardless of how much she'd like to stay, she also knows when it's time to go.

* * *

Here's a (not-so) secret: Cato's father beats him.

His neighbors see his father through the windows (they say his father is always drunk), punching and kicking him. Clove listens intently, albeit with a look of tailored nonchalance on her face, silently assembling information about this enigma of a boy that she shouldn't even really care so much about. This is the benefit of being a child her age: she's old enough to be told things, but not quite old enough for the gossipers to watch what they say, just in case.

The secret does not stay secret for long. If there's one thing the people of District Two love almost as much as the Games, it's scandal and gossip, delicious bits of information exchanged behind locked doors and whispered in ears. There's a certain glamour to it, a veneer of diamond sparkles, a façade of intricate deign hiding the beast underneath.

She begins to dig for information like a pirate searching for gold, but her gold does not glitter; no, it is ugly and broken and she wants to fix it but doesn't know how.

* * *

Her new penchant for gossip is how she finds out. The news that Cato's father has an injured leg would never have been so interesting to her were it not for the fact that the neighbors also mention, with a roll of the eyes, how once again the shouting from their home had reached new highs that week, until, oddly, it stopped right around the time the father hurt his leg. It's fair to say that perhaps brains are not valued quite as highly here as brawn, but Clove's never been one to underestimate the former, because without the latter, it's all she really has, and it's never failed her before.

It really doesn't take much for her to deduce what, exactly, has happened. The bloodied rags the neighbors see the father throwing out and the scar that everyone says bears a striking resemblance to a stab wound (that particular fact has practically the entire District coming up with new theories as to what actually happened, none of said theories being even remotely plausible nor accurate) is more of a confirmation than anything else. She checks for herself anyway, and it's in that moment, in the fading twilight where she's managed to track down Cato's father and take a good look at the very ugly and very new scar on his leg that has undoubtedly been caused by a knife plunged deep into the flesh, that something in her chest squeezes tight and she very nearly cries for the first (and last) time in her life.

That night, she takes a knife to a tree, cutting into it to release the strange, inexplicable pain in her chest every time she thinks of Cato and his father, carving out zigzags and curves and all sorts of shapes into the tree bark until it is a mishmash of cuts and slices, as if there's a beast within her that needs to let itself roar. It's a beautiful feeling, she thinks, being able to meticulously mark something forever as her own.

After a while, the markings begin to, from far away, take the form of the Victor's crown.

(This is how it begins.)

* * *

For Clove, the space between childhood and the Academy is a bit like dreaming: some of it passes slowly, others quickly, and things seem vivid but she knows the real world—the world of the Academy and blood and the Games—is just outside. It's all ebb and flow, like the tides on an ocean.

She trains diligently at Pre-Academy, utilizing nearly all of her free time to go to somewhere, anywhere, to throw her knives at walls and trees and targets until the sight of the blade sinking into her intended target is ingrained in her mind and the sound of the weapons hitting objects echoes throughout her dreams. It masks the nausea she feels whenever she lets herself think about Cato's father beating him until Cato is bruised and bloody.

Sometimes, when she really can't take it anymore, a tree will come out the next morning, covered in patterns, and like a Monet painting, the notches in the bark all blur together until, if you squint hard enough, they make the shape of a crown.

It's easier, she thinks, to lose herself in the sensation of release—of, when she's throwing, diligently working at snapping her wrist just right, of letting go at just the right angle and direction so that regardless of how windy or rainy or cold it is, her knives hit home every time. And when she's closer, the feeling of carefully plunging the blade into something other than a dummy or a target slowly consumes everything else, until she does it over and over and _over_ again until there's nothing left to cut.

She dreams of wearing the Victor's crown, and sometimes, she'll trace the pattern onto her palm with the tip of her knife, never breaking skin but leaving a slight imprint for a few seconds regardless.

Perhaps in another world, she would be an artist, with paint and brushes and water, but in this one, all she has is a knife and trees and, when she's older, flesh and blood, and it's beautifully, deliciously destructive.

* * *

**II. Glass**

You_ can break anything, but so what? I can take anything._

~Ellie Goulding, _Little Dreams_

* * *

Clove starts the Academy when she is 12 years old. It's all frosted glass and steel beams and white walls. It's too clean, too _cold_, and she never really gets used to it even by the time she's gone.

It's only when she's training that it begins to feel right. The Training Center is offset from the rest of the campus in more ways than just location. It's the only place in the entire area that hasn't been scrubbed clean to the nitty-gritty details; not even the strongest chemicals have been able to erase the years of blood and sweat and tears and dirt that have become ingrained in the weapons and walls. She finds herself spending more and more time in there, throwing knives until her shoulder aches and her fingers cramp.

The instructors love her.

But the favoritism comes at a price. She's elevated levels before the rest of the girls, even the biggest ones, and it's hard to ignore the whispers that trail after her wherever she goes. Her roommate is huge, a giant of a girl who is clearly a tribute in the making and knows it. Yet it's Clove who's getting the attention and being moved up before anyone else, and it's a bitter pill to swallow for everyone.

The first time Clove is elevated, the roommate begins to glare at her all the time, snapping back responses when prompted to speak. The second time Clove moves up, the roommate stops speaking altogether. And the third, she moves out and Clove is left all alone, which is what she prefers anyway. Or at least, that's what she tells herself every night, when she glances over at the empty bed in the room and feels a hollow in her chest that shouldn't even be there. She shouldn't care, _doesn't_ care. One less person to worry about means one less potential point of weakness. It's not like they were even friends, anyway.

But sometimes, she lies awake at night to the sound of pounding rain and is reminded that being the best of the best is a lonely existence.

One night, she opens the window, and begins to carve the shape of the Victor's crown onto the branch outside, and soon enough, the entire tree is covered in crowns, the object that she vows will, one day, rest upon her head.

* * *

The seemingly universal hatred of her at the Academy seems to grow worse. Whispers become words, spoken without qualms of her overhearing. Once, someone breaks the blade of one of her favorite knives and she can only feel grateful that it isn't her mother's old dagger, the one with rubies embedded in the hilt, the very first one she ever threw. The fact that the only reason why it wasn't that one is that it's hidden painstakingly doesn't temper her relief in the slightest, though she does begin to carry it with her wherever she goes after the incident.

It's strange to think that she is now the object of the gossip she had once listened to so attentively. The only solace she can find is whenever she jumps another level, because the more advanced students do not interact with those below them, and so she is always given a brief reprieve before the resentment begins once more. The only pitfall to it is that it's always more severe, because the age gap is always just a little bit bigger each time, and yet the skill gap hardly shrinks.

She'll hit the roof eventually and won't have any more levels to advance anymore, and then even the brief respites will disappear.

By the time she's been here six months, all the trees surrounding the building she lives on end up mutilated by crowns.

* * *

It's a few months after she's enrolled that it happens.

It's storming outside like it hasn't stormed in a long time, and she's walking to the Training Center because _what else can she do to occupy her time?_ when he bursts down the path a little ways ahead of her. It takes a moment for her to really, truly process that it's Cato, in the flesh, barreling down the path like a demon is chasing him in from of her, but when she does, she can't seem to breathe for a second because there he is: the boy who has had a far greater effect on her than either of them could have realized.

After a few seconds of being frozen, Clove quietly jogs after him, not that she even needs to worry about being undetected, seeing as he's making plenty of noise for the two of them already. Not to mention that he doesn't seem to be paying any attention anyway.

As she follows him down to the center, she notices a spot of red on his shoulder. It's blown off by the wind, and when she gets closer, she realizes that it's a red leaf. Its shape bears an uncanny resemblance to a crown, and without really thinking about it, she snatches it out of the air. It's a stupid thing to do, she thinks, but she doesn't let go of it.

He bursts through the Center doors with a strange ferocity, grabs the heaviest and most ornate sword off the rack, and decapitates a dummy 100 yards away. It's impressive, to be sure, but all Clove can really think is _It's beautiful_.

She shakes herself mentally and catches a glimpse of his face in the blade of another sword that's hanging further away. He's sweating, frustrated, maybe even angry, and as she grabs a handful of knives off a table, she sees her chance.

"Well, well, well. I always knew you had anger issues."

He starts slightly, just now realizing he's not alone, and turns slowly to face her. He's bigger, more muscular, and (though she's loath to admit it) even handsomer. His blond hair is still like a shock of lightning to her, and those blue, blue eyes pierce her just as much as ever.

"I'm not angry." His voice is lower now, too, but it has a pleasant timbre to it.

He's not. Not really. She can see frustration, exasperation, but not really anger. But she baits him, because she can see that he's already off-balance and she'd love to get some kind of reaction from him. "Mm-hm. Whatever you say, Cato," she replies, pausing for a fraction of a second before his name, subtly telling him _I remember you._

His jaw clenches. "I'm not angry, _Clove_." But all she hears is _I remember you, too_.

She smirks at his returning the favor, and says, "Keep telling yourself that." She turns away then, feeling his burning gaze upon her, and smiling once she knows he can't see, because she wanted a rise but got so much more, and begins to throw the weapons in her hands with ease, hitting the center of the dummy's heart. It his the exact center, but the knife is a little angled to the left as opposed to completely vertical, which she'd been aiming for, and so she rapidly throws the rest of the knives into other fatal areas on the body, each denoted by a miniature target. This time, all the throws are perfect.

Dimly, she hears him grunting and slashing away at dummies with a sword, and she's content with the knowledge that she's unsettled him enough that he's taking it all out on the Academy's materials. She shrugs and continues to throw knives, and when she catches him watching her in the reflection of a shield, she says, "What's so interesting?" without even glancing up at him. If she's honest with herself, she doesn't even really need the reflection, because she can feel him looking at her, and it's almost as tangible as the leaf that's still in her pocket, waiting to be set free.

The knife in her hand hits the dummy in the jugular a mere fraction of a second later, and Cato turns away.

"You know, it's okay to watch me." She manages not to laugh, but fails to keep the smile out of her voice.

He stiffens immediately. _Thwack_. Another knife hits. "I wasn't watching," he growls, and turns to walk away.

This time, she can't keep herself from laughing. "What're you so worried about, Cato? A small girl who's three years younger than you who just happens to be good? Human contact? Most of the kids here have friends, you know. But you don't."

And she knows, almost as sure as her own name, that he doesn't, though she doesn't have any proof.

But the reason she doesn't have friends is that she should not be good and yet she's beyond that. He, however, should have leagues of followers, because he is something to be expected: big and brutal.

But her mind flashes back to that day, years ago, that she glimpsed a twisted scar on Cato's father's calf, and thinks she maybe understands.

He turns red, and she relishes the feeling that she's making him lose control of himself. "I'm not scared of you," he says slowly, like he's trying to convince himself as well as her. "And maybe I don't need friends."

Of course he doesn't: friendship is a weakness. But that isn't the reason why he doesn't want them, or at least, not his main one.

"You know," she says casually, "just because one person hurt you, it doesn't mean that everyone else will."

He flushes again, and she knows she's caught him, like a cat trapping a mouse.

"My father is none of your business." His voice is cold, but it cracks a little at the end and she knows he's trying to shut down, to close himself off, but she isn't going to let it happen.

"Tell that to all of District Two."

His family, she knows, does not come from the top of the heap (unlike hers) and so she can bet that he doesn't usually hear the gossip that circulates so freely on the upper echelons of District Two society. How ironic it is that despite his family's lower status, he himself is of such interest that they all took notice of him anyway.

"District Two is pretty big," he says slowly, like he knows that she's one step ahead of him but doesn't quite know what that step is.

She raises an eyebrow and her lips quirk upward slightly, because really, she's always ahead of the game.

"So are people's mouths."

He doesn't say anything for a moment, just stews and thinks and she knows that he's finally managed to close himself off enough to compose himself. She sighs. "You can't use one person to judge everyone else, Cato."

She turns to leave, walking past him on her way to the exit, and as she passes, she slips the red leaf from her pocket to his. Perhaps it will come to hold some sentimental value for him in the future, or at least it will bother him that she managed to get something past him, because she knows just as well as he does that the last time they spoke, it had rained water and red leaves from the sky, and maybe she's onto something when she thinks that for him, these objects are linked to her more than they actually are.

That night, she itches to cut something and takes a knife to the windowsill. Yet when she wakes up the next morning, there's only half of a crown carved into the wood, and she doesn't quite recall not finishing it. It bothers her, both that she has no recollection of the action and that it's incomplete, and she almost wants to grab her mother's dagger from its hiding spot under her pillow and cut out the other half, but looks at the clock and decides that it's time to go. As she passes Cato on her way to breakfast, however, her arm oh-so-gently brushes against his, and all of the sudden, she no longer feels the need to finish it.

* * *

She knows before he does.

It doesn't come as a surprise to her when the instructor tells her yet again that she's to move up another level, and she shrugs nonchalantly as she always does, but it's when she's halfway back to the dorms that she realizes that her new level is _his_ level.

Well then. Bring it on.

The next day dawns cloudy with the promise of rain later, and the breeze is refreshing as she walks to the Training Center. She steels herself before pushing open the doors.

Almost magnetically, her eyes find his as soon as she enters. She manages to catch a flash of blue before he quickly averts his gaze.

The instructor approaches her and clears her throat, silencing the class. Aside from Cato, it's only now that any of them notice her in the room. Fresh blood.

"This is Clove. She's thirteen." The class noticeably stiffens, and she can almost hear the thoughts cycling through their brains. _Thirteen. So small and skinny. How the hell did she get in?_

_You don't belong here_.

Once the instructor stops talking, they all silently back to the walls, like a human circle, trapping her inside. She gets the message. _Prove yourself_.

She almost laughs at the absurdity of it all. Do they really think she isn't used to this exact thing happening every time she moves up? Do they really think they can intimidate her by doing this?

Still, even she cannot ignore how small she is and how very, very big they all are. The room feels bigger than it normally does, and she can feel a blue-eyed gaze burning holes into her back as she grabs a handful of knives and throws them all perfectly into various targets around the room, hitting the centers every time.

Grudgingly, the rest of the class moves on. The show's over, now that she has not humiliated herself. There's an air of resentment and envy hanging over the Center now, but that's better than scorn and derision. At least she's used to the former.

She can't seem to help herself from glancing over at Cato every few minutes, and even though she knows that he knows she's watching him, he does not look back at her, and by the end of class, she feels a strange mixture of relief and disappointment.

As usual, at the end of class, the instructor asks who she'd like as a sparring partner. She knows it's not standard protocol, but she's guessing that because of her age and talent (and size), they want her to be able to spar with whomever she thinks would be the best fit. Best not let the top dog of her age group receive any less than the best.

For the first time, however, she doesn't have a name ready at the tip of her tongue even after quietly observing the class while training herself.

"I don't know," she says. "Can I try once with everyone?"

The instructor agrees, and that's that.

* * *

She can't sleep once she starts trying out partners (none of them seem right for her, and she knows whom she'd choose in any other world, but she can't in this one), and it's on one of these nights that she decides to take a walk. It's windy and rainy, and she's tempted to go back inside after a few minutes when she hears the voices. On pure instinct, she ducks behind a bush, and only a second later, she sees two figures appear and she knows it was the right choice. She'd have never made it back to the door to the dorms on time, and she isn't too keen on staying with the two boys out here: Octavian and Augustus.

They are, aside from Cato, the biggest boys at their level. They're also the stupidest. And the ones with the worst tempers and lowest levels of self-control.

She can't quite make out what they're saying, but as they get closer, she picks out her own name and her chest tightens in anticipation. Her attention, however, is diverted by the doors opening, and when she sees who it is, she's so shocked that she almost falls into the bush she's hiding behind.

Cato.

No matter how much he's been avoiding her, it seems, he keeps getting thrust into her path anyway, whether he knows it or not. She's never been one to believe in fate, but even she's beginning to think that this is getting a little ridiculous.

He's remarkably quiet considering the rain and, consequently, the puddles on the ground. Gusts of wind blow red leaves off of the trees, and she wonders if he will take this as some sort of sign, too.

Octavian and Augustus are close enough now that she can hear them, and she begins to pay attention to their conversation once more.

"Fucking thirteen. How the hell did she even make it in?" hisses Octavian. Despite the resentment that laces his words, Clove smirks. Leave it to Octavian to actually care about a girl who will never be a competitor of his due to the age gap. No one under eighteen is ever Tribute. Someone always volunteers.

Her hands, however, feel differently, and the blade of her knife begins to trace a crown in the dirt when Cato makes his appearance known to the two boys who are being entirely too conspicuous.

"Who?" says Cato. It's only one word, but she can hear that deep down, under his cool façade, that there is something brewing underneath.

Augustus replies, not even questioning Cato's presence. "You know who. _Clove_."

"What are you going to do about it?" This time, Cato's voice is a little more uneven, a little more dangerous, and she can see that his audience hears it this time, too.

Octavian pauses, as if weighing some sort of consequence, and then says with an air of confidence, "Teach her a lesson."

Despite his size, she isn't really scared. _I could end you_, she 's always armed, after all, and her brains outmatch his brawn.

Her attention, however, is once again stolen away by Cato.

"No," he says, his voice strained and rushed.

Now there's something to think about: Cato, for all his act of not knowing she exists, actually cares enough to tell them not to go after her. She knows, of course, that she gets under his skin probably far more than the rest of his acquaintances combined, and she'd known he cared in some capacity about some aspect of her, else she wouldn't be able to send him off-kilter like she likes to do. But this?

"What?" splutters Octavian. "What do you mean, no?"

"Stay away from her," Cato warns, his voice low and deadly yet fully in control of himself.

"Why do you care?" says Augustus, raising an eyebrow. "She's nothing to you."

Cato stiffens noticeably at that, and Clove is rethinking her entire opinion of Augustus and Octavian because clearly, something about her makes Cato off-balance, and they are even stupider than she thought they were for not taking advantage of a chance to bring him down, or not backing away because he could very easily end them both if provoked enough. The Academy is a system, and they don't quite know how to use it.

"Stay away," he repeats. "Or I'll see to it that you will wake up one morning with your legs gone."

Octavian blusters on like a train chugging merrily off a cliff, at least in spirit. He's not entirely brainless, it seems, because he's keeping quiet now. But he's also visibly unconvinced, or unwilling to capitulate, at least, and Clove wants to laugh at his circus show of power.

Cato smiles tightly, dangerously. "Or maybe you won't wake up. Maybe it'll be your heads that disappear."

He's not in jest (he's never in jest when it comes to her, she thinks to herself), and both boys turn pale and back away into the building with their tails between their legs. After a beat of silence only interrupted by the rain and the swish of leaves from overhead, he turns to follow them and she inadvertently catches his eye, brown meeting blue, and a feeling of warmth spreads throughout her chest, even as she begins to duck down out of sight, even as a red leaf blows in front of his face and their brief flash of eye contact is broken on two fronts.

(So much for remaining undetected, she thinks, but she's not quite sure she minds.)

When she looks back, he's shaking his head like he thinks he's imagined it. She stays out there for another half hour, reliving the conversation she overheard again and again in her mind. She can't quite make sense of it all.

When she walks into the building, she passes a tree, and for the first time since she's started going on these midnight walks, she pauses, grips her knife for a brief second, and then keeps walking into the building, leaving the tree unscathed.

The next day, she meets his eye at the start of class and thinks she sees a glimmer of _something_ there, but it's gone just as quickly as it came.

At the end of class, she tells the instructor that she wants Cato for a partner.

* * *

They begin jumping levels rapidly after they begin sparring together, always advancing at the same time, always as partners. They're perfect opposites, playing on each other's weaknesses because those are the other's strengths. It's awkward to be thrust into each other's company so often at first, after their premature meetings both outside and inside the Academy, and despite the fact that Clove asked for it, sometimes she wonders if it was the right thing to do.

Yet somehow they end up becoming friends, eating and walking everywhere together, an odd couple that turns more than a few heads at first. It sends the school's universal resentment of her flying skyward (_What on earth does she have that the rest of us don't that lets her be friends with him?_ they whisper), yet ironically, it's also what quiets the mutterings. No one would dare cross Cato, at least.

She wakes up one morning and realizes that it has been months since she's taken a knife and drawn a crown.

* * *

He begins to pull away.

It's not so obvious at first, and she can almost fool herself that nothing's wrong. He slowly closes himself off, smiles less, talks less. Then he cuts their meals shorter, doesn't walk with her all the time. It's when he all but shuts down completely that she realizes just how much she's gotten used to him, how much he's become a part of her life.

How much she needs him.

She ignores it anyway, holds on just a bit tighter, hoping against hope that maybe she's just being paranoid, just imagining it, but she can still can feel him drifting away in the current, and some days, she can almost admit to herself that it hurts.

She's never been one wait around and stew, not really (though compared to Cato, she's got the patience of a saint), and so lets her frustration out on him while sparring.

He's always had a slight advantage over her because of his size, but today, there's an opening, and Clove decides to play a bit dirtier today and knees him—_hard_—in the crotch. Somewhere in her head, she dimly acknowledges that this is the first time she's ever been able to really pin him.

When she finally releases him, he gets up, glares at her, and walks away without a second glance to go spar with someone else. She swallows a bit harder when he walks away than usual, and then turns around herself to practice on her own. He doesn't notice that she's throwing the daggers harder than usual, splitting the actual targets in half with the force she's driving the blades into them.

After training is over for the day, she corners him as he's about to put away his things.

"Cato," she says, trying to cover up nerves with assertion, "I need to talk to you."

He stiffens slightly. "Kneeing me was cheap today."

She resists the urge to slap him. "Since when were the Games ever fair?" she replies. "It's the food chain. Protect your liabilities. And besides, don't change the subject."

He sighs and carefully puts his sword on the rack and then—with stealth that surprises even her—turns and beings speedwalking away from her as fast as he can. He's out the doors before she can even blink.

_Damn you_, she thinks, and hurries after him, running quietly so as to surprise him. When she's about even with him, he still hasn't noticed her, and in a fit of spite, she lets the frustration that's inside of her out and elbows him as hard as she can in his (probably still-sore) groin. Reflexively, he keels over, and she pins him before he can get away again.

"Why are you avoiding me?" she demands. "And don't even bother trying to say that you aren't."

"I—" he stops then, at a loss for words.

"Well?" she demands impatiently.

"Maybe it's better," he says, slowly and deliberately, "if we stop."

She laughs hollowly. "What, exactly, is there to stop?" she says, though she knows exactly what he's trying to say. "Practice? Stopping that won't help you in the Arena."

He swallows. "Stop...this. Whatever we are."

She clenches her jaw and turns away, giving herself a moment to allow the flurry of emotions that have surfaced to fly across her face before composing herself and turning to look at him again. She knows exactly what he's thinking: She's too much of a risk, and really, what were the odds of them staying friends beyond the Academy? There's no use pursuing something that's bound to end, is there?

(But she's never been one to let the ends define the means, and it hurts more than it should that he does.)

"Fine," she hisses in defeat, in anger, in betrayal. Without even realizing it, she's leaning closer, reveling in the fact that his breathing hitches a bit at their proximity and his eyes fill with something she can't place. It's a good way to surrender, she thinks, to drag your opponent down with you.

"May the odds be ever in your favor," she spits, leaning closer still. His eyes darken even more with that unidentifiable emotion, and she enjoys this, this power she wields over him—and something else about how close they are, too.

Before she can let herself think about this too much, she leaps up from him and runs, fast as she can, away from him, and behind her, she can hear the pounding rain that has begun to pour from the sky, and she ducks to avoid the red leaves that have been blown off the trees in the wind.

It's only later that she realizes how close she came to kissing him.

The next morning is the first in a long time that she wakes to find the dagger in her hand, and her door with two crowns carved into it.

* * *

Later, she'll think with no small bit of irony about this time of her life, without Cato. Or, more specifically, this time in her life, while Cato is now partners with Adrianna, a big, blonde girl who is every bit the epitome of everything Clove is not.

Adrianna. Maybe she was onto something when she reconsidered her views on fate, because is it even possible for life to throw her under the bus this many times?

She tries not to overthink this partner change, because there's no way Cato is this cruel. Or omniscient.

(_Did he ask for Adrianna?_)

Still. There's no way he doesn't see the longing, predatory way Adrianna looks at him, like a piece of meat she wants to eat, right? He's not that oblivious. Adrianna is so obvious that you can see through her more clearly than you can see through glass, and it really shouldn't bother Clove so much, but it does.

(You could almost call her jealous.)

She's stuck with Octavian, and it's hard to say who's more unhappy about the match. Clove never needs more than a minute to pin Octavian, despite the fact that is about a foot taller than her and weighs twice as much. It doesn't even matter to her that he hates her with all his guts. He isn't anything close to a challenge. Then again, no one but Cato ever really was.

Often times, she finds herself watching him spar with Adrianna, graceful and fluid and always the winner. On the occasions that Cato catches her looking, he breaks off eye contact almost immediately, like she's burned him. The times he doesn't, she shakes herself and goes back to doing whatever she was doing before.

By now, almost everything in her room is embellished with crowns, and half of the time, she doesn't even remember how they got there.

* * *

Clove throws herself into her training with a vengeance. Her throw improves so drastically in the next few weeks that if this wasn't already the top level, she'd definitely have made it all the way up there by now.

It's easier to deal with whatever lingering emotions she's feeling over Cato that shouldn't even exist when she's throwing and stabbing and becoming a killing machine. Perhaps she's gone a little crazy, too bloodthirsty, but there's a beauty in daydreaming about all the different patterns she'll carve into her opponents' skin when she gets to the Arena. Thinking about hurting strangers takes away some of the pain (_Is that what it is?_ She can't even tell anymore) from Cato pushing her away.

Once, she spars with Adrianna for a level-wide tournament that the instructors spontaneously decide to hold, and when she finally manages to get her knife next to the bigger girl's throat, she lets it cut in, just a little, and wonders what it would be like to cut in all the way, a smooth slice, a thin red line that would grow thicker and drip until there was no blood left.

She feels the slightest tingle of pleasure at this fantasy, but suppresses it and steps away before she actually does slit the girl's throat.

That night, she dreams that she cuts a crown into Adrianna's throat, blood flowing out, mixing with that yellow hair. Even in a dream, the feeling of the knife slicing through flesh is a deliciously exquisite feeling, and she relishes every moment of it, until she finally pulls out the dream-dagger out of dream-Adrianna's neck and watches as the girl, wide-eyed, bleeds out in silence, red liquid running out in rivulets until it pools around her head.

When she wakes up, the mirror is cracked and certain parts of it are shattered, but if she looks closely, she can see the outline of a Victor's crown in the fine lines that run through the glass. Dried blood—her blood—runs through the cracks, and it's only when she looks down that she sees the shard of glass embedded in her left hand.

* * *

She wakes to a thunderstorm one day and her mind flashes back to the first time they met here. She's not superstitious, but something in her mind prickles, telling her that today is not an ordinary day.

It's not.

They have surprise evaluations today on hand-to-hand combat, and of course they have randomly assigned partners, and—of course— her partner is Cato. They don't make eyes contact until they reach the mats and perform the required handshake and get ready. Clove tries to ignore the almost tangible awkwardness hanging between them, but the tension is thick and heavy and she can almost taste the bitterness of their parting on her tongue.

He's on her once the whistle blows, evidently trying to make this end as soon as possible. She's not unfamiliar with his using this technique, so she manages to stay on her feet, only dropping to the ground to roll out of the way of the punches and kicks that fly her way. He's just as brutal as she remembers, ans she thanks her lucky stars that she's had experience fighting him, because if this was the first time, it would be over already.

He leaves an opening for a brief second and without hesitation, she begins to sweep her elbow towards his groin. It's vaguely reminiscent of the last time they spoke, and a part of her wishes this weren't the way to go, but another whisper in her mind wants to hurt him like he's hurting her. She wonders what he'll do when her elbow makes contact.

But it never does.

Finally anticipating the move, he knocks her elbow out of the way and she can see, with a combination of admiration and horror, that he's finally been able to block the move, despite any emotional attachments to it—and that her side is now open. He pins her before her arm—the one he has swept out of the way—has even extended completely to her side.

They both sit up at the whistle, breathing hard. She racks her mind for something to say that will maybe make everything right between them again, but all she can come up with is, "You finally managed to block that."

He looks into her eyes, really _looks_ for the first time since that day he called it off, and, with an expression that's a mixture of sadness and something else, echoes her words from long ago. "I had to protect my liabilities."

She smiles faintly, sadly, and doesn't say a word, because this is the only way she knows how to say _I understand_.

(She's always understood him, and maybe it'd be easier if she didn't.)

(She has to move on eventually, because she doesn't want to be the one holding him back.)

* * *

During the day, she trains and trains until at night, she finally drags her exhausted self to shower and sleep. She tries not to watch Adrianna smiling and flirting with Cato. It prickles at her, but she pushed the feeling that always arises in her away, because she's not jealous. _Not jealous_.

(He was never hers to keep, anyway.)

Once in a while, she'll have that same dream about carving a crown into Adrianna's throat, and she always wakes up inexplicably happy the next morning.

She wakes up every day with a dagger in her hand, and there's always a new crown carved into the walls or the furniture or the floor somewhere. Soon enough there's no space left, but there's always carvings on top of old carvings, and when there really is no room left, crowns start appearing on her own skin, on her stomach, on her chest, but they never hurt and they always disappear a few days later after they have scabbed over, and maybe they were never really there in the first place because wouldn't she remember cutting into herself?

It's only when the crowns become deeper, leaving faint scars, that she begins to think that maybe they're real after all.

The new scars that cover her stomach are enough to keep her from noticing the blood that begins appearing on her window, drawn with a finger into the shape of a crown, and it's only after she wakes up and finds that the blood is smeared everywhere on her fingers and that the window isn't letting in nearly enough light anymore because the bloody crowns are now overlapping that she realizes that perhaps she's crazy, after all.

Victor's crowns, everywhere, in her mind and in her room and on her body. Crown-shaped leaves, crown posters, crowns on TV, crowns everywhere. She can't let go, until there's one on her head, too, and sometimes, she doesn't even know if it's a want or if it's a _need_ anymore. She never remembers anything anymore, it seems, just training and training and then sleep, and then the next morning there's another crown, haunting her even after it's over, even after she can count one more blank spot in her memory of the night before. It's only in the morning, when she wakes up to new scars and blood suffusing her blankets that she can finally breathe again, knowing that _this is real_.

Once, while she spars with Octavian, she cuts the first line of the crown deep into his cheek after pinning him, before realizing that this is real, she's awake, and he's looking at her with absolute terror and just a bit of resentment, because the Academy doesn't want any scars or blemishes on its eighteen-year-olds this close to the Reaping and the cut is deep enough that it'll still be there when this year's Games begin.

She leaps up, breathing hard, and mumbles a quick apology before they start again.

In her dreams she cuts through everyone else. When she wakes, the scars are all on her.

* * *

The morning of the Reaping, she gets up out of bed with a groan.

She's a little sore—the left of her belly button has a very fresh crown adorning it this morning_—_and, coupled with the fact that it's sort of pointless to go since there's always an eighteen-year-old volunteer, this makes getting out of bed harder than it ought to be.

_Cato is eighteen._

With a start, she forces herself away from the tangled (and slightly bloody) sheets, and rifles through her closet to find a dress that would be suitable for the Reaping. She doesn't have very many; the District does not value beauty. _There's District One__ for that_, she thinks with a roll of the eyes, and in doing so manages to spot, at the back of her closet, a dress that she had forgotten existed.

It's red, the color of autumn leaves and bloody crowns, of love and hate and passion, all the things she shouldn't care about, all the things that consume her when she's all alone, in bed at night, drawing a knife across her own body.

(Sometimes he shows up in her dreams.)

With a certain masochism, she puts it on.

It's a cold and drizzly morning, and as she walks to the square, the wind blows the scarlet skirt of the dress around her legs, making a soothing swishing sound. It's jarring, she thinks, so see something so much like the color of blood around her thighs. She's always been careful to wash her sheets every day, and she wonders if maybe they would look like this dress if she stopped.

With some chagrin, she thinks that perhaps she really is insane, after all.

* * *

May DeVive is possibly the most annoying object on the planet. Or at least, her voice is.

"Let's start with the boys first this year!" Her Capitol accent, topped with that weirdly husky voice and maroon hair and a greenish dress that is strongly reminiscent of goose droppings, makes it hard for Clove to take her seriously, but when it finally registers what May is saying, Clove blinks.

No one starts with the boys.

May's hand swirls around the slips of paper in the ball, as if who gets Reaped actually means anything. It's who volunteers that really matters.

"Octavian Caesar," she calls out, and Octavian shrugs and grins (and she can almost see the camera zooming in on his face, cut still visible) and begins to head up the stage before Augustus intervenes, practically screaming, "I volunteer!"

And then, from the back, a massive boy with blond hair and blue eyes emerges, running with sheer power towards the stage, managing to beat Augustus there. Clove's heart clenches for a second at the sight of him, moving so gracefully and yet already with a deadly force. "I'm the volunteer," Cato announces calmly, with a voice that somehow manages to pierce through the whispers (_always whispers, flying around the District_) and reach every ear in the square.

This is when Augustus decides to demonstrate the sheer enormity of the gaping hole where his brain should be, because he actually tries to shove Cato off the stage. Cato, nonplussed, simply punches him off of it instead.

May DeVive smiles. "What's your name?"

"Cato Ludwig," announces the boy.

"Ladies and gentlemen," says May with a smile, "your male tribute of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, Cato Ludwig!"

_Cato, Cato, Cato_.

Clove's mind has suddenly begun to spin a million miles an hour, swirling with thoughts and hopes and something not unlike fear. What if he wins? What if he doesn't? Should she visit him in the Justice Center before he's carted off to the Capitol?

But now May has moved onto the girls, she realizes, and she snaps out of this funk just in time to see May DeVive pull out a slip of paper and, with a sudden intake of air, hears her own name read aloud.

"Clove Fuhrman."

She can't go in to the Hunger Games with Cato. She can't.

_But there's always a volunteer_, she thinks. Hope blossoms and spreads, like blood from a freshly cut crown, and perhaps she is saved, after all. She begins to make her way up the stage, footsteps splashing softly through the puddles brought on through the rain, waiting to be broken by someone's voice, anyone's voice, saying _I volunteer_.

It never comes.

She climbs lithely up the steps to the stage, and still no one has said a word. She catches a glimpse of the entirely of the District, and it's only now that she realizes how very big it is, after all. Whispers are, once again, running in rivulets through the people, the way her blood would run down the cracks in her mirror, and the fear of going into these Games with Cato comes back with a vengeance, stomach clenching painfully, heart hammering. She can't go in and kill him. She does, after all, owe him her life after the Augustus/Octavian incident.

(_She will not let herself think about any other reasons why_.)

Dimly, she hears May announce her as the female tribute, and when she shakes Cato's hand, his palm easily engulfs hers, and for a moment, there's a certain comfort to be had in the feeling of something as warm as his hand surrounding something as cold as her own.

* * *

The train ride is full of awkwardness and tension and she wants to break this awful silence that's engulfing the two of them, but she doesn't know what she could possibly say. It was always him pushing her away, she acknowledges, and the only real way for them to fix this is for him to pull her back in.

Rain drips onto the windows, grey sky dismally expressing how horribly today has played out. Clove counts eight hundred raindrops before Cato says, in a rush, "You weren't supposed to be a tribute this year."

She blinks, torn between agreeing with him (because really, he's right) and getting angry with him (because she can still win (_but she can't kill him_), and because after everything, after all this time, this is all he has to offer her?), and settles on offended. "What's that supposed to mean?" she says. "I can win these Games."

He shakes his head, and it's only now that she looks at him, really looks at him, and sees that today has taken its toll on him, too. "They assign tributes," he says slowly, and what he says next makes her blood freeze. "Adrianna was supposed to volunteer."

Somewhere, she manages to formulate an "Oh," and he says something about the girl being dragged off and whipped or hanged, and she manages to make the appropriate facial expression—some mixture of unsurprise and pity—and they lapse into silence again for the rest of the ride.

Adrianna, she thinks, and she can't stop repeating the name in her head. _Adrianna_. Adrianna was supposed to go in for her.

Looking back, she'll think that there are only a few moments in her life that break through the bloody, crown-induced haze to provide some sort of emotion. Cato, of course, provides most of them, but there are two incidences that are not supplied by the boy.

One of them is with her childhood friend. It's all really one stretched-out experience for her, a very long moment that spans months and even years, and it's filled with sunlight and naïve happiness, and this is really the only memory of joy that is untainted by the smell of blood. She can't shake the feeling of unrestrained glee, of wild days of learning how to throw knives and play mock-Games, and so she has never been able to separate the feeling of unblemished joy with her childhood friend—

—Her childhood friend, who, when they said goodbye all those years ago, whispered to Clove as they hugged that she would marry Cato (_"He's the best of the best,"_ she whispered). Her childhood friend, who has now thrown her to the wolves, who has managed to punish Clove for stealing Cato away despite the fact that Cato had escaped from her grasp, too, months ago.

Her childhood friend, Adrianna.

And so, because of that, the second incident that prompts true emotion from Clove is now, on the train, with Cato managing to destroy and reconstruct the foundations of her world once more (but oh, not in the way he ought to at all), and the feeling, this time, is pure, unrestrained betrayal.

* * *

**III. Flesh**

_Come take a walk on the wild side, let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain—you like your girls insane._

~Lana Del Rey, _Born to Die_

* * *

The journey to the Capitol takes two days, and by the time they've reached it, everything in the room is stamped with a crude Victor's crown. Her sheets are always bloody when she wakes up, but she no longer even feels sore in the mornings, she's so desensitized to the feeling of waking up to a cut.

The Avoxes, she thinks with some amusement, probably have no idea what the hell to do with all that vandalized furniture and bloody sheets.

But then again, neither does she, and she's had much longer to figure it out than they have.

* * *

The Capitol is bright and bubbly and luxurious to the extreme, and she hates it immediately upon arrival. Still, she plays her part perfectly: she waves, smiles, looks adorable, acts like a Victor.

All that childhood engagement in the gossiping social circles of the District have paid off, after all.

Cato, it seems, is doing better at adjusting to the District that she is. The colors and lights seem to genuinely thrill him, at least a little bit, and his size is a natural crowd-drawer. Never mind District Twelve, because Cato Ludwig is A Contender.

Clove is really just his shadow—almost literally, since she's certainly small enough compared to him to fit under it_—_but she vows that she'll prove them all wrong. She will win.

(_How can she kill Cato?_)

(It's not even a matter of ability.)

_Veni, Vidi, Vici_, she tells herself. _I came, I saw, I conquered_.

She will conquer.

_You weren't supposed to be a tribute this year_, Cato mocks in her mind. Sure, she knows he was really referring to Adrianna. But pain is relative, and his (seemingly) obvious lack of faith in her, partnered with Adrianna's inaction, still stings like the cuts used to, back in the beginning, and maybe she hasn't moved on like she should have, after all.

She won't admit any bitterness, but even the dessert she has that night (her first night in the Capitol, she thinks dully) does not taste as sweet as it should.

* * *

For the first time ever, she wakes up in the middle of the night.

Perhaps it's just the novelty of sleeping in an unnaturally comfortable bed, but it's midnight when she wakes with a gasp, knife embedded in her stomach, blood everywhere. For a second, she's struck by the feeling of pain, something that she hasn't felt in a long time, before realizing what, exactly, is stuck in her body. She yanks it out, blood still running out, and goes into the shower to clean up.

When the blood is washed away, she notices that the crown is only missing one side. The sight of the unfinished image bothers her more than she can stand, and, unable to stop herself, she takes the knife and slices through her belly to complete it.

Blood spurts out immediately, red liquid dripping into the drain to mix with water and turn pink. She revels in the sight before the pain sets in , and it's only then that she realizes what she has done. She drops the knife—another first—and her hands come up to cover the wound. Gasping, she watches as the blood comes out through her fingers, warm liquid seeping through the spaces between.

What has she just done?

She doesn't know how long she stands there, letting the water wash away all traces of the incident, but when it finally runs clear, she gets out and dries off shakily. Without really thinking about it, she puts on some clothes and makes her way down to Cato's room.

For a moment, she hesitates outside the door, wondering if she should take the gamble, but the desire to go in outweighs the fear of being shut out, and before she can overthink herself into tiptoeing back into her shiny new carved-up room, she creeps in, whispering, "Cato?"

He's sitting on the bed, the window transformed into a backdrop of autumn leaves and rain, and she can tell that he has been unable to sleep. The significance of the window (_and the leaves and the rain_) is not lost on her, and she thinks that perhaps he cares more than he lets on.

"Clove?" he murmurs back, voice slightly scratchy. She takes it as an invitation to join him, and she silently hops on the bed, sitting close to him, but not too close.

"I can't sleep," she says, feeling like a child again. He shifts closer, perhaps involuntarily, and somehow his arm winds itself around her shoulders, the warm weight of it like a blanket, comforting her.

"Neither can I."

They sit there in silence for a moment, listening to the steady _drip-drip-drip_ of the onscreen water, and she finds herself wondering how someone so brutal as Cato could also be so aesthetic as to link, forever in his mind, the image of autumn rain to the idea of her.

As if in answer, he asks quietly, "Do you remember how we first met?"

Of course she does, she almost says. She remembers all of it: the downpour, the red leaves, the words. Yet she knows she can't admit that, can't admit any weakness. It would only hurt both of them.

"No," she says after a beat of silence, and she doesn't know if the hope thrumming in her chest is there because she wants him to agree with her or disagree.

He's silent for a moment, too, and then replies, "Neither do I."

Disappointment, bitter and harsh, blooms through her chest. She knows it's better this way, yet she wishes that they could both just say what they're really thinking, what they're really feeling. She's never really been able to let it all out in words, only in the force of her throws, and she wonders what that sort of release would be like. She's tired now, ready to go back to bed, yet she can't bring herself to leave now, not when she's finally really getting to wake up. Without really thinking about it, she lays her head on his shoulder, and is surprised to find that it fits perfectly.

Perhaps it is the coming fatigue that has loosened her tongue, but the words she's been thinking all along pour out now. "How am I supposed to kill you?" she asks, and she's not really sure if he'll have the answer.

She manages to look at his face on time to see the brief flash of _something_ flicker across his face, before he shakes his head. "We shouldn't be thinking about that."

He's right, of course, and she doesn't know why she even bothered to ask such a question.

There's more silence, more dripping rain and falling leaves, and then he says the words that she has, perhaps, been wanting to hear for months now. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" she says almost desperately, because she needs to hear it.

"For leaving."

_No_, she thinks. _You should be sorry that you had to in the first place. You should be sorry that we care at all about the other, because either way, one of us is going to get hurt in the end_.

She lets out a laugh that reeks of bitterness. "And then where would we be now, Cato?"

He pauses, thinking, and then says, "I should have enjoyed everything before it was too late."

(_She's been waiting for him to say these words ever since he broke off the _something_ that they had, but it's too late now, isn't it?_)

She turns a little, trying to formulate a response, but the best she can do to justify everything he has done is to say, "You did what you needed to do."

He turns then , face anguished, so close to hers, and she wonders if maybe he's about to do something crazy, or stupid, or both.

"No," he says desperately. "_This_ is what I needed to do."

And then he's kissing her.

Her world does not shake or shatter; no, it _implodes_, caves in on itself before breaking into a million tiny lights, because _God, this is what she's been aching for all this time_. She can't tell where she ends and where he begins, but he's everywhere, leaving a burning path everywhere he touches, and _Is this what love is, this feeling of fire?_ His hands are on her stomach now, tracing the scars, and he mumbles "I love you" somewhere in there, and she wants to whisper it back to him, because perhaps this is what she's been feeling all these years, too.

Ironically, the thought is what makes her push him away. She can't love him, not now, not ever, because either way, at least one of them will be killed before the month is up. She pulls back, ignoring the rush of cool air that makes her want to burrow back into his warmth, and looks up to see the confusion and hurt reflected back at her in his blue, blue eyes.

She smiles at him, but she knows he can see the ruefulness she's feeling, and absentmindedly touches her throat, where she's sure she'll have bruises the next morning. The idea of his having marked her as his own thrills her, and it takes her longer than it should to suppress the emotion.

"I have to protect my liabilities, Cato," she says, and it's the only real explanation she can give.

And this time, he's the one who's smiling back with the same sadness in his eyes, telling her _I understand_.

(How ironic it is that she's doing exactly what he did.)

* * *

She sleeps well the rest of the night, and when she wakes up, there are no new scars.

* * *

During the day, she does what she does best: training. She never misses the target, never performing any less than perfectly, and she knows she has most certainly impressed the Gamemakers far more than Adrianna ever could.

It's a bittersweet victory, but perhaps she celebrated too soon. She's always been observant, but a few weeks from now, she'll be cursing herself for being so blind.

Although all things considered, perhaps she'll blame Glimmer for her oversight here, because whatever injustice Adrianna has unleashed upon her, it's _that blonde's_ fault that she's just a tiny bit distracted while she's whipping daggers at dummies and targets. She can't help seeing those green eyes trained, like a pair of tracker jackers, on Cato all the time.

That's why she never sees what the Twelves are studiously doing until after the fact, when it's too late: avoiding certain stations.

_Not jealous, not jealous, not jealous._ She has to keep reminding herself that she is not jealous, because this denial is really all she has left.

(_Glimmer is tall and blonde and beautiful and why would he want someone like Clove if he could get someone like Glimmer?_)

Glimmer is an idiot, though, thinks Clove maliciously. Hopefully she'll be killed quickly. It's not like it would be that hard to do. Maybe Clove could accidentally hit her in the throat with a knife in the bloodbath...

When Glimmer takes her eyes off him for a second, Cato manages to catch the murderous expression adorning Clove's face, and, with an expression of pure amusement, throws a quick wink at her.

* * *

She starts to cut herself again in her sleep, always waking up in the middle of the night, but thankfully, the cuts are small and complete and so she doesn't feel innately obligated to finish the crowns like she did the first night here. Still, the experience always leaves her shaken. It's one thing to wake up hours after it's over; it's another to resurface when it's all so fresh.

She always washes the evidence away from her own body, and then makes her way to Cato's room, but she can never bring herself (or allow herself) to open the door and enter. She can't afford it, and neither can he.

(_In any other universe, she'd take him back in a heartbeat._)

* * *

Her interview dress is almost the exact color of her Reaping dress, and she doesn't know how to feel about it. It's full of ruffles and extraneous material, and opposes almost every aspect of her personality. She almost envies Cato for his getup, because he's sliding by with a simple suit.

_And he looks good in it_, she thinks, and then stops herself.

There's a beat, an awkward silence, and then he says in a slightly strangled voice, "You look nice."

She nods. "You look alright, yourself."

And then it's her turn to go and she can't even process what Caesar is saying; her mouth just moves on autopilot and she plays the role of the classic District Two female, with one caveat: she's small (unlike pretty much every female tribute from Two ever), but she spins that to look like she has something up her sleeve, which she doesn't. At least, nothing out of the ordinary I-can-move-faster and the works.

She isn't even sure that she makes much of an impact upon the audience, but Cato does. He shines like a beacon from the stage, radiating strength and power, and they'd all be fools not to sponsor him.

And then Twelve comes on and ruins it, and it's only a matter of chance that she manages to turn and catch the expression that crosses his face as Lover Boy confesses his feelings to the entire population of Panem. It's a combination of anguish and admiration and regret, an expression that strikes Clove to the core because she thinks she maybe knows what he's feeling.

She wishes it were different for them, too.

(_In her dreams, it is._)

* * *

It's their last night before they go in, and this time when she wakes up, the knife is once again embedded into her side. The crown, it appears, is finished, but she hadn't managed to stay under long enough for the blade to come out of her body.

She washes off the blood—by now she's desensitized enough that it no longer shocks her to see so much coming out of her—and changes, and then, as with every other night, finds herself at his door once more.

Once again, she can't go in, but this time, she almost physically needs to. He's the only one who can help her, now, but the price they'll both pay if she enters is immeasurable. She's stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In the end, he's the one who makes the decision for her by opening the door.

She can't find words to say that would be adequate, so she simply brushes past his large frame and sits on the bed. The window is, once again, displaying the autumn rain scenery, and she watches everything flutter down, trying to memorize the image of something so sacred to Cato.

He sits down without a word next to her, and before she even realizes it, his arms are around her.

"I might let you win," he says, and she feels guilt, heavy and hot, burn through her. She's never even considered that this might be an option, never knew that this idea even existed, and she wonders, not for the first time, why he would want someone like her. It only takes her a second to be struck by the emotion, and then another to realize that for her, purposely losing isn't really a bad idea.

But if he tries to—

"No," she pleads, shaking her head, the very idea of him _dying_ for her causing her almost physical pain. "You can't do it. If one of us comes out of there alive, it'll be in District Two style. Besides, they'd hurt me anyway if you killed yourself so that I could win."

He's silent for a moment, and she knows he isn't convinced. She flashes back to a few nights ago, and she remembers, with a pang of guilt, the way she had blatantly lied to Cato's face.

_Do you remember how we first met?_

_No._

But then again, his response hurts, too.

_Neither do I._

"Cato?" she blurts out. He turns to look at her.

"Yeah?"

Words fly out of her mouth like a flock of birds waiting to be set free. "I lied."

He cocks his head to the side, bemused. "When?"

"When I said I didn't remember out first meeting." She leans against him, reveling in how comfortably she fits against him. "I remember every part of it."

They don't speak for another minute, processing what she has just said and the repercussions of it. It's liberating, in a way; she's been unable to put her thoughts to words for so long now that speaking honestly is like a fresh breath of air after being unable to breathe for a year. But she's sure she'll pay for it later. Such freedom as this always comes at a price.

But once you start breathing again, you can't stop.

"Cato?" she whispers.

"Yeah?"

"You lied, too, didn't you?" It's not a question, not really.

An acutely pained expression crosses his face, and she almost thinks he will cry, but he doesn't. Instead, he responds.

"Of course I did," he says desperately. "How could I forget?"

Something powerful that she can't put a name to (_Love?_) surges up within her, from her belly into her chest, igniting some fire in every fiber of her being, from her hair to her toes, and it pushes her forward, towards Cato, until her mouth finally meets his, aching for some sort of release from the emotion grappling with her soul. It's not relief she gets—the opposite, really—yet somehow, this is so much better than being stuck in the limbo she was in mere seconds before.

_I love you_, she thinks, and maybe she says it out loud, or maybe she doesn't, but she knows he knows anyway.

This time, she doesn't let herself think, she just breathes and lets go (_Fuck it,_ she thinks, _it doesn't matter if it's pointless or not anymore_), and then she's disappearing into the feeling of _him_, and nothing else exists in the world, after all.

* * *

**IV. Blood**

_I feel the fear in me, a__nd I don't want to fall asleep. __When I turn into someone else, __I know that it can't be beat._

~Ellie Goulding, _The Ending_

* * *

The arena is not a bomb—thank God for that, because once, when she was little, it was literally a minefield—but it feels like it, anyway, because she's always aware of time, of seconds and minutes and hours and days, and she can almost hear it trickling away. There's only so much space between _before_ and _after_, between how it once was when she did not have to worry about the Games this year, and when she is left to pick up the pieces.

That is, unless she's one of the pieces to be picked up.

But time, she knows—oh, time is running out for her, for him, for _them_, and it's just like a bomb, waiting to explode in her face.

(_Ends don't define the means_, she reminds herself, but even she cannot completely ignore the clock that's ticking out for them.)

* * *

The gong, the bloodbath, the Cornucopia: it's all a blur to her. Somehow the boy from Four dies during the bloodbath (_weakling_) and so it's just Clove and Cato and Glimmer and Marvel and Tara from Four. They manage to pick up the boy from Three somewhere in there, and he resets the mines from the countdown so as to blow up any possible intruder.

Of course, Clove know it'll backfire. There's no way it won't. It will undoubtedly piss off the Gamemakers that a simple tribute has managed to figure out the secret of the mines, and here in the Arena, getting on the Gamemakers' bad side is like asking to die.

Not to mention that if someone does trigger one, it'll blow up all their food, and how do none of them realize this? She looks over at Cato as the boy makes his offer, and knows that he realizes the potential consequences, too, but isn't taking them seriously.

Glimmer, however, does not possess the tiny amount of brainpower necessary to realize this, and says yes before Clove can say a resounding _hell no_.

And when Clove catches the slight amusement on Cato's face at the girl's stupidity, she knows that protesting will be a lost cause.

* * *

They find Fire Girl completely on accident, but who cares about connotation? She's weak and burned and they've got her literally up a tree, and honestly, if she manages to escape now, Clove wouldn't be completely averse to it. Someone who can actually figure out a way to get out of Fire Girl's conundrum probably deserves to.

There is one bit, however, that bugs her: the arrows. Sure, Fire Girl was baiting Glimmer. Yet the moment she plucks the silver arrows out of the trees, Clove knows that something is up. Why would Fire Girl, who was smart enough to at least get up the tree, pick up something she doesn't need?

Her eyes meet Cato's in an instant, and she knows that he understands, too: the one station that Fire Girl actively avoided was the archery station.

It could have been self-consciousness, calculation of survival odds, that kept her away from it. Or it could have been that she had something she didn't want anyone to know.

If Fire Girl gets her hands on the bow that Glimmer's clutching, they're all in trouble.

(Why is it always Glimmer's fault?)

There isn't much that Clove can do now, so she looks over at Tara, who for whatever reason is watching Marvel; Marvel, who's busy staring at Glimmer; Glimmer, who's eyes are attached to Cato; and then finally Cato himself, who looks absolutely pissed that Fire Girl is still breathing. When he turns to see Clove watching him, he calms down slightly. This, of course, is when Lover Boy finally decides to remind him that he still exists and suggests that they simply wait for their quarry to come down or die up there.

Obviously, Lover Boy is trying to buy her more time, but since there's nothing better they can do, the Careers agree. The Anthem begins, and the faces of the death flash across the sky.

Half of them are her kills, and the rest are Cato's.

As soon as the Anthem ends and the night is (relatively) silent once more, Glimmer latches onto Cato's arm like she's a magnet and he's made of metal. It's sickening, really, and Clove can't watch it any longer. It's bad enough that one-sixth of their team is distracted by testosterone; it's even worse that the object of said person's interest is only looking at the situation with humor.

(_Not jealous, not jealous, not_ _jealous._)

"I'll take first watch," she says abruptly, trying to snap herself out of the direction she knows her thoughts are headed. Cato looks up then, questioningly, and for the first time since they've entered this Arena, he shows some semblance of actually caring that she exists.

"You sure?" he asks, and he actually sounds concerned.

She nods, and then, unable to maintain eye contact with those blue irises, she looks away. A few feet away, Lover Boy is sleeping, murmuring Fire Girl's name. Marvel's out, too, back turned from Glimmer, who's falling asleep on Cato. Clove slips around the tree to keep watch for anyone who would be stupid enough to come after them or, more likely, light a fire.

She has a few minutes of silence to herself to try and organize her thoughts before she hears a slight rustle and Cato's footsteps quietly sound as he slips behind the tree to join her. She gives no indication of having heard him, but both of them know she has, and when his arm settles around her shoulders, she flinches involuntarily.

He hasn't been paying any attention to her all day. Why start now?

"I can take first watch," he says conversationally. Something about the casual way he says it bothers her, and she keeps her eyes away from his.

"I can do it."

He protests, "No, really—"

She snaps. "Don't you have some snuggling with a member of Future Prostitutes of Panem to do? Blondie McBlondie?" she snarls. "Don't mind me."

At that, he grins and then tries to smother it. _So he thinks it's funny, does he?_ she thinks. This is life or death here, and he can't stop letting this girl paw at him even under these circumstances? She glares at him fiercely, but it doesn't really faze him.

"Oh, I see how it is," he says.

She knows he's baiting her, but goes after it anyway. "How what is?"

"You're jealous." The grin widens, and she resists the urge to throw the knife in her hand at him.

Instead, she retorts, "Jealous of a brainless blonde with too many sexual and not enough survival instincts? No, thanks. I could slit her throat right now and she'd never notice a thing, other than the fact that we're trapped in here for God knows how long with a lot of males around."

He smirks then, and even now, she's struck by how handsome he is in the moonlight. "Yes. I think you are."

However handsome he might be, though, it still doesn't mean that he's not being unusually obnoxious, and on instinct, her grip tightens on the knife, digging into her palm. "Please. Maybe in District One, that's how it works, but you should know that in Two, we have more important things to worry about."

"Jealous."

"Not."

"Jealous."

"Not." She's not...right?

His arm around her tightens and he leans in closer, leaning his head against hers, breath blowing gently across her face. "Jealous," he says, quieter this time.

She shivers slightly, but stands her ground. "Not." Her voice hitches, and she knows he has won.

He chuckles at that and presses a few kisses against her throat, soft lips pressing against her skin, and she feels unusually warm, considering that she's seated so far away from the fire.

"Don't worry," he says contentedly. "I'm only setting everyone up for a good show when we get to kill her. It'll be something to watch when she tries to seduce me and you cut her up into dainty little pieces."

She relishes the thought of that, picturing the knife cutting through Glimmer's smooth skin, slicing crown after crown into it. It would be satisfying, she decides, to see the blood rushing out, to have Cato by her side as the girl screamed at him to help her. Perhaps she could even kiss him before Glimmer's dying eyes, a touch of insult to injury, a master's final detail to an exquisite painting.

"I'll carve patterns into her skin," she promises with enthusiasm and just a touch of vindictiveness.

He smiles at the statement, and says once more, "Jealous."

"Not," she replies, more for the sake of replying than of actually convincing him.

"Don't worry," he repeats. "I prefer smart girls."

At that, she smiles at him for the first time that day, and then lays her head on his shoulder to go to sleep. Right before she's pulled under by a sea of unconsciousness, though, she swears she can feel his lips brush against her nose, cheekbones, forehead, chin—and finally, against her own lips, and then she's in dreamland.

* * *

As it turns out, she never gets the opportunity to kill Glimmer, because Fire Girl has done the job for her.

She wakes to the sound of buzzing, and a gold cloud rapidly approaching. Her head still rests against Cato's shoulder, and she stays there for a moment, relishing the last remnants of sleep and comfort, because she may not ever get it again. You never really know, with the Games.

With a sigh, she finally gets herself to stand and stretch, yawning. The cloud is coming closer, and she can't make it out at first, so she blinks once, twice, and—are those tracker jackers?

Fucking hell.

She leans back down and shakes Cato's shoulder, but he isn't waking and the bees are getting closer. The smart thing to do, she knows, is to leave them all and run while she can, but she can't go without Cato. Even as she's thinking this, she feels one sting on her left arm, and it hurts more than a stab wound would.

She tries to call his name, but her throat is dry and the words get stuck, and she gets stung again, but she shakes his shoulder harder and prays he'll get up. He's never really been a heavy sleeper, and of course, as luck would have it, today is the one time his guard is down. She can't help but feel like perhaps this is her fault, in a way.

He does wake up after a few more seconds, and it's good, because the venom has started to affect her, and the world doesn't quite look right anymore. It only takes him a second to understand the situation before he whirls around blindly and grabs her arm, and begins to run towards what she thinks is the lake. Dimly, she hears Glimmer calling for Cato to help her, and even in the haze, she feels a violent stab of pleasure at the fact that Cato has, rather than slowing and turning around, started running faster.

She trips slightly, and it's in this moment that everything begins to look wrong. The trees are ballooning, swelling up to epic proportions, and instead of sap running out of them, it's blood, thick and hot and heavy, flowing over trunks and roots and pooling on the floor until it becomes a river of the salty red liquid. The animals all fall into the river and become replicas of Victor's crowns, shiny and gold, and when she looks down, her arms are covered in crowns. The blood river is flowing rapidly now, until it hits the lake, where the water in there rapidly turns redder and redder until it, too, contains no more than blood.

(Is that the girl from Eleven she sees, jumping around in the trees that are leaking out blood, leaping towards Fire Girl and Lover Boy, as Cato pulls her towards the lake?)

She staggers in, falling into the blood-water, and when she resurfaces, somehow, to breathe, she manages to crawl back onto land.

The last thing she sees before blacking out is Cato, clambering back out of the water to run back where they came, and when his back has turned, she sees, from an invisible knife, his back being cut, slowly, deeply, until it is adorned with a giant bloody Victor's crown.

Then everything goes black, and this time, her sleep is filled with nightmares of Adrianna, holding a knife above her and cutting crowns into her until she bleeds out; of Octavian and Augustus, breaking her legs off her body and throwing them out a window; but mostly, of Cato, doing all of the above; Cato, getting killed in the Games; Cato, getting beaten up by his father once again, this time until he's nothing more than a bloody pulp.

When she finally wakes up (and thankfully, she's the first out of her and Cato and Marvel (and Glimmer and Tara, it seems, are dead)), she's sore all over and once she finally gets a good look at herself, she can see why: she's covered in blood, though none of her clothes are cut. When she strips down to her underwear to wash off, it becomes much easier to see crown after crown overlapping on her skin, on her stomach and sides and hips.

She's never had so many of them at once, and she wonders how many of her dreams of Cato and Adrianna cutting into her were halfway real.

* * *

Of course she's right about their food getting blown up.

They've all gone to check out a fire—is this person really stupid enough to use the logs that'll cause the most smoke?—and she's anticipating the upcoming kill with glee. They're almost there when a second column of smoke rises into the air, and that's when she becomes suspicious.

"Guys?" she says slowly, and the boys turn to look at her expectantly. "Why are there two fires that are almost identical that were lit within the same hour?"

Marvel looks like he's about to say something somewhere between a protest and a dismissal, but it dies on his lips when he looks over at Cato and sees that the bigger boy is actually taking her seriously.

"What should we do, then?" says Cato, and Clove already know what the answer will be.

"We should go back."

But even as she's saying it, there's a loud _boom_ that is unmistakeably the sound of multiple explosives rather an a cannon, and they all take a second to look at each other, affirming that they all know what, exactly, has happened.

_I told you so_, thinks Clove, but she does not delight in being right, this time. When they get back, everything is destroyed and smoking and the boy from Three is already backing away from them, utter terror in his face, as Cato takes a look at the detonated food (all the mines, it seem, have been triggered) and—no pun intended—blows up. The boy manages to run two steps before Cato grabs him and breaks his neck.

Clove has enough food to last a week or two in her bag—she's always been prepared for this possibility—but Cato doesn't have as much since he never really thought that this would happen, and Marvel doesn't have any at all. Eventually, they agree to split up. Marvel leaves first, disappearing into the woods with his spear, and Cato takes a look at Clove and asks sardonically, "Shall I go?"

A ghost of a smile graces her lips. "No. You're staying with me."

"Good." Cato's face breaks out into a grin and, quickly, he pulls her into the Cornucopia, away from the cameras, and gives her a long, lingering kiss before heading back outside to salvage whatever's left, and Clove has to smother the stupid grin that crosses her face once he disappears before she can exit the horn, too, and join him.

* * *

It's the announcement that shocks her back to reality.

Being alone with Cato during the day is something of a novelty to her, since they've only really had privacy in the dead of night back at the Capitol. They have to be careful, of course, as to how close they appear to be, since they are not playing the part of star-crossed lovers, but the very idea of being alone together is good enough. It's been the first truly _good_ day she's had in ages.

Claudius Templesmith, of course, has to throw her in for a loop and ruin it.

The announcement takes a second to sink in, but when it does, she turns to Cato, and the expression on his face is something she's never seen before: hope and joy and love all rolled into one emotional bowling ball, headed straight for her heart, and in that moment, she feels it too, and she doesn't even care what the rest of Panem is thinking as they embrace.

But later that night, during her watch, she begins to pull the announcement apart. Two Victors this year? Of course the Twelves probably have a fan base of people aching for them to end up together, but isn't this a little extreme?

The question only takes a second to fly through her brain before she answers it: Of course it's too extreme, too convenient, and she's betting that the Gamemakers and President Snow know it is, too.

One Victor will make it out alive. The odds of any pair lasting is low, and on the off chance that it happens—well, wouldn't it be a more dramatic ending if they took it back, anyway? There is no way that both she and Cato will make it out alive.

One of them can, however, and it's just a matter of who it is.

_What to do, what to do?_

She can't lose these Games, can't give up everything she's worked towards, everything she's ever wanted. The Games have consumed her entire life, and she's loath to set that childhood dream of being a Victor go. She's always been a survivor, and to be anything other than that would not quite be her.

It would serve them all right back at the District, be a punch in the face to Augustus and Octavian and Adrianna and everyone who ever crossed her. It would be the smart thing to do, after all, and she's certainly capable. These Games are all she's ever really had; they've always been there for her.

And yet she can't stop seeing Cato in her mind. Cato, smiling at her. Cato, sparring with her. Cato, kissing her, telling her he loves her (and her own disembodied voice echoing it back to him, because, after all, it's the one truth she'll ever tell). Cato, looking at her just hours ago, with all the hope in the world in his eyes, truly believing that both of them can come home.

Cato, loving her, and her loving him back.

(She'd deluded herself into thinking that that was enough, but perhaps he was right that it wasn't.)

She leans against the tree trunk, thoughts whirling about her mind, trying to find a solution to this mess. She can't lose, but she can't win, either, and yet she'll have to choose anyway. At dawn, she finally gets up and rouses Cato for the day, watching the pink sky turn to blue.

She's been trained all her life to be a survivor, be a _Victor_ (_at least of some sort_), she thinks with no small amount of chagrin, and she's loath to let them take her own personal victory away from her.

She knows what she needs to do.

* * *

**V. Crowns  
**

_You're a hard soul to save, with an ocean in the way, but I'll get around it._

~Florence + the Machine, _Over the Love_

* * *

What he doesn't know won't kill him (or maybe it will, because you never really know when it comes to the Games, and she's the only one who's one step ahead of the game here), so she lets him hope. She'll have to crush it eventually, but she won't let the Capitol take any more time with him away from her than needed.

She's always been taught to win, in the end, so she'll take these Games for herself, beat them at their own game, and maybe she'll be able to steal a victory for herself in the end.

* * *

The first time Claudius Templesmith's voice reverberated through the Arena, Clove thinks with no small irony, it cracked her world apart. This time, it may be the only way she can fix it again.

_Feast_.

She can work with that.

* * *

She's not even sure how she manages to convince him to let her go (some combination of sharp rhetoric, overblown pigheadedness, and a shameless amount of seduction, she admits to herself), but, thank God, he does. The latter strategy feels uncomfortably Glimmer-esque, but she shakes it off. They both enjoyed that part of it, at least.

She doesn't necessarily feel happy, exactly, that she wins this argument—it's more relief that pervades her when he finally acquiesces—but she knows that this is perhaps the best decision she's ever made in her entire life.

Some part of her feels a bit guilty because she knows that after this, he'll regret this final surrender for the rest of his life, and she's never wanted to cause him pain before, but she also knows that this is the only thing she can do.

* * *

That night, while he's asleep, she sneaks out and creeps through the trees until finally, she reaches the field of grains, and, with a bit of trepidation, enters.

She's careful to watch where she steps; she has no idea what's under those long grasses, and for all she knows, it's filled with snakes and holes and other menaces. Of all possible ways to die, she thinks, it would be stupid to break her ankle by stepping in a hole and lying there until something or someone found her, without even getting what she came here for.

It's not the easiest task to find him, and she's beginning to wonder if finding Five would have been easier than this. For such a huge person, Thresh is surprisingly well-hidden, and it's only when Clove gives up searching and finally calls out his name that he appears, a giant rock in hand. She balks at the sight and instantly thrusts the knife she's holding in her backpack, drops it, and holds up her hands in an unmistakeable surrender. He does not attack.

"What do you want?" he asks quietly, voice firm.

She does not waver in times of distress, and this is no different. With a voice just a determined as his, she says, "I need your help."

(That night, when she finally makes her way back to the place where Cato is sleeping, she crawls into the sleeping bag with him and huddles in close and drifts off to sleep. Yet when she wakes up, there's a bloody knife in her hand and a bloody crown on her stomach, because even though she's with him, it's like he's already gone, and she knows it's all her fault.)

* * *

"You sure you want to do this?" he says for the fifth time in ten minutes. "Because I can go to the Feast."

"Yes," she says, again, for the fifth time as well. "Cato, I'll be fine."

He gives her a dubious look, and she rolls her eyes. "Do you really have so little faith in me?"

At that, his eyes soften, as does his voice. "I'm just worried."

"I know," she says, and she's not really frustrated with him anymore. "You go hunt Thresh, okay? I can take care of myself."

"Okay," he says, acquiescing.

She hesitates, then reaches up and kisses him softly. "I love you," she says, maybe for the last time, because she doesn't know if she'll be able to say it to him again after tonight, after her mission is accomplished.

"I love you, too," he replies, and she leans into him, savors the sound of the words, the sweet taste of this feeling on her tongue, the way he feels, the way he smells, and then pulls away, and heads for the Cornucopia.

* * *

Clove wants to curse aloud when Five disappears beyond the trees, red hair flying behind her. There goes another tribute, another opportunity to make survival odds go up, and she's seriously having to resist throwing her knife because yes, it would be a very stupid thing to go chase after Five when Fire Girl is here with a bow, but _damn_, why couldn't she have anticipated Five doing something like this?

That's when Fire Girl snaps her out of her frustrated thoughts by sprinting towards the table with the sacks on it. Clove spares a quick glance at Thresh, standing stoically at the edge of the clearing, not at all inclined to join this fight and definitely bracing himself in case Cato does find him, before she throws a knife at Fire Girl, who manages to duck and fire a shot straight at Clove's heart.

_No_, thinks Clove, and she manages to turn and keep that silver arrow from piercing her heart. It hits her left arm and _stings_ but hey, at least she's not dead, and Clove simply yanks out the arrow and keeps running. She throws with her right arm, anyway, so this won't really incapacitate her.

Fire Girl manages to grab the tiny orange sack with the 12 printed across it and shove it up her wrist before turning to shoot again, but Clove already as a knife in her hand and by the time Fire Girl is halfway turned around, the knife is already slicing through her forehead, blood instantly rushing out over one eye. It's a satisfying sight to see so much coming out of so small of a wound, and it takes everything in her not to rip another one through her stomach and watch more pour out. She runs and tackles Fire Girl then, a mere five feet from the Cornucopia, and pins her.

In a sickly sweet voice, she begins to taunt her, about Lover Boy, about whatever she can think of, and then, as she whips her head around like she actually _believes_ what Fire Girl is saying about Lover Boy hunting Cato (better put on a show for the cameras) and sees Thresh inching closer, but she disregards it because she's got Fire Girl now.

Clove begins to talk about Rue, and she's relishing the anger on Twelve's face (and getting a facefull of blood and spit is so worth it), and that's when Thresh makes his move and grabs her.

_No_, she thinks. She cannot die yet. It isn't time; she can't go now. This is not what she had asked him to do, and perhaps she should not have spoken of Rue, after all, because the pleasure she had derived from Fire Girl during that monologue does not make up for this whole thing not going to plan, not at all.

Still, she does not panic enough that she loses track of what needs to be done now that she has to improvise. As Thresh hoists her body up into the air, he pauses for a split second, as if adjusting to her weight, and in that instant, she reaches down and slices a deep, wide smile through Fire Girl's throat. Blood begins seeping out, and Fire Girl's mouth opens, as if to cry out, but all that happens is that she begins to choke on her own blood, gurgling and frothing, red liquid spewing out and staining her lips, and Clove is struck by how beautiful it all is, the red against that dark hair, the slide into the oblivion of death, and she's struck by how very much like a work of art it is.

All that it's missing, really is her signature: a crown.

And then Clove loses sight of Fire Girl's red-hazed death, because Thresh has her pinned up against the golden horn and he's yelling about Clove killing Rue (something in his eyes reeks of an ulterior motive, a reason for diverging from their plan) and for a second, she really is scared of the beast that could be this boy.

And then he raises the rock, and looks at her with a strangely eager sort of determination in his eyes and she starts to reconsider for a second because she's beginning to realize that perhaps Thresh really has had his own agenda the whole time, (_Maybe I should have done this differently_, she thinks, even as she's yelling for Cato, even as she hears his voice calling back to her, coming to try to save her), but it's too late, too late, and as Thresh brings it down on her skull, a million memories race through her head, but she can't help reliving that meeting with Thresh, trying to see what went wrong, because this isn't right at all.

* * *

_"I need your help."_

_Thresh glances at her, an eyebrow raised, voice flat. "You need my help." The incredulity in his voice is nearly palpable.  
_

_"Yes." She swallows, throat dry, and her voice cracks a bit at the end. She can't help thinking of Cato, all alone back at their camp, asleep and thinking they actually have a chance at getting out together, and her heart breaks a little because she knows she'll have to be the one to crush that hope._

_"What," he says in a slightly mocking voice, "could a tribute from _District Two_ need from a tribute from poor little District Eleven?"_

_She looks him in the eye and, this time in an even voice, replies, "I need you to kill me at the Feast."_

_He blanches. "What?"_

_"I need you to kill me at the Feast."_

_He blinks once, twice, and lowers the rock slightly. "Why?"_

_"Because if I do it myself, they'll punish him," she replies._

_It's to Thresh's credit that he knows exactly who she's talking about. "How do you know they aren't watching now?"_

_This, at least, she has an answer to. "Because," she says, "I took an hour to get here by setting snares to catch food. They'll have lost interest by now."_

_Thresh studies her with those strange golden eyes, and she struck by the oddity of seeing the color, because she's only been staring into bright blue irises for the past few days. "You can both get out alive, though."_

_She shakes her head. "No," she says softly. "They're playing us all for fools."  
_

_"Why not tell him?"_

_"I can't do that to him. He'll find some way to get himself killed so that I'll win then, because that's how he is. But he needs to win. He's a better person than I am, and anyway, I have no one if I go back home. He could start over."_

_Thresh sighs and rubs his neck. She gives him a moment to process this before saying, "I just need to kill Fire Girl, and then I'm done."  
_

_"Why?" he asks once more. He's smarter than he looks, she thinks. He's scoping out the inside of her brain, analyzing weak spots, so that just in case something is up, he won't be completely disadvantaged.  
_

_"Because she's a threat."_

_"And I'm not?" asks Thresh archly. "You are, after all, gunning for Cato to go home and in the process, I have to die, don't I?" Clove pauses. She hasn't thought of that._

_"You are," she concedes, scanning his face, and her heart has begun to sink.  
_

_His eyes flash up to hers, gold meeting brown, and something in them makes hope stir a little inside of her again._

_He opens his mouth to say something, closes it, and then opens it again, trying to find the words, and then he says. "I shouldn't say yes."_

_Disappointment begins to bloom in her chest, bitter-tasting and foul, and she's not sure what to do anymore when he continues, "But..."_

_She waits for him to keep going, and he obliges._

_"I think that maybe you deserve to have _something_ go the way you want it to, for once."_

_"I love him," she bursts out then, and Thresh looks at her with a sort of sadness, clouded with an unexplainable guilt in his eyes, and just says, "I know."_

_"When you do it, " she says thickly, "Make sure I'll have time to talk to Cato one last time."_

_He nods. "And he'll come after me?"_

_"Yes."_

_He pauses then with an unreadable expression in his eyes, and quietly says, "I can't promise I won't try my hardest to win."_

_She nods, because something is always better than nothing and she knows, deep down, that if Thresh kills her, Cato will have the willpower to beat this brute of a boy from District Eleven.  
_

_"The Feast is tomorrow night."_

_"Yes. I know."_

_"Are you sure you want this?"_

_She nods again. "I'm sure."_

_He runs a hand through his hair. "All right. I'll do it," he says._

_For the first time in her life, she says with complete honesty, "Thank you."  
_

* * *

This is why Thresh deviates from the plan: there are 24 Tributes in one arena, clock winding down for 23 of them.

And it's never so hard to figure out anything, really, in retrospect; hindsight is 20/20, after all. _Clove Fuhrman,_ she thinks to herself in the way they'll whisper about her, maybe, back in District Two a few years from now. S_uch a clever girl, but love clouded her judgment just as it does to everyone_.

She'd forgotten some things, after all: that Fire Girl and Rue were allies. That Fire Girl would have qualms about killing Thresh because of the first bit of lost information, but Thresh would pay his debt to Fire Girl and move on. That Fire Girl would be able to kill Cato more easily than Thresh, because Cato wouldn't be able to rely on brute force against her but that's all he'll have without Clove.

And that Thresh is smarter than anyone has been giving him credit for: that he surely knows these things, too; that he knows what it would take to have a shot at that crown, and what it would take for him was for Fire Girl to kill Cato, then for him to kill Fire Girl, and even Five would not be able to hide from him forever.

_"I can't promise I won't try my hardest to win."_

He really did try, didn't he?

* * *

It hurts like nothing she's ever felt before, and all she can really think of is this _pain_. It consumes everything, defines everything, and it's hard to imagine anything outside of this, and for a brief second, she wonders if everything is truly worth this feeling of agony. Her vision, she notes, is off; lights are hazy and white and everything has a rainbow tinge to it. She moans a little, and her hearing is not what it should be, either; everything sounds far-off and distant. The sound makes her head pound even more.

There's a hollow sound of footsteps, and then he's there, floating over her, those bright blue eyes lighting up her world like the sun, piercing through her soul. "No," he begs, "Stay with me, stay with me, Clove, please."

_Cato_. The word won't come out, sounds are too hard to make.

"You can't go, we have to go home together, we're almost finished here, just _stay with me_."

_Cato_, she tries again, but to no avail.

"We haven't had enough time," he says desperately. "I need you."

_Cato_.

And then he kisses her, lips sliding over hers, and she can taste the saltiness of one solitary teardrop on her tongue.

"Cato," she gasps out, finally.

"Stay with me," he pleads.

"Cato."

And then his palm is cupping her cheek, and that warmth is the strength she draws from. Her vision is going; hazy white spots are appearing everywhere, rainbows edging everything, and she memorizes his face one last time before saying the last words she'll ever speak to him.

"Win for me."

And then she's gone.

* * *

When Cato places his Victor's crown at her grave after he wins, perhaps in some other dimension, she's watching and laughing at the irony that she did get the object that so haunted her dreams, somehow, after the finale. Perhaps this is her encore.

(And maybe the crown wasn't really what she wanted most in the end, after all, but it's all she has, now that she's gone.)

* * *

**_Fin._**


End file.
